Walking to my car from the office today I passed a small maintenance building on the campus. Or at least, I thought it was a maintenance building. I had heard some very loud rock and roll coming from it a couple of months ago but thought nothing of it. This evening, the doors were open and I saw that there were a couple of glass kilns in the space.
I went up and introduced myself and asked if I might come back and photograph them. So expect that I'll do something in the next couple of weeks. There is something really primal about a humongously hot furnace, glowing red-orange. Not to mention the very cool shapes the glass takes as it is being blown.
A few years ago my folks bought me an 800Mhz Titanium Powerbook as a birthday gift.
I've loved it since day one. Last year I put a new, fast 100Gb Seagate (7200 rpm) into it last year and that was a real speed boost. Today, I installed a new DVD burner (it never came with one) from OWC Computing. It had been some time since I had looked for one, but the price is now down to about $120.
My CD burner had stopped burning CDs, sounding like a washing machine when I tried. The new drive only took about 1/2 hr to install (courtesy of some Torx bits) and seems to work the treat.
There's life in the old dog yet..
It's about a year ago this week that I was duped into living on the East Coast.
It's a long story, not worth repeating.
But now that I've been here about six months I thought it might be interesting to document some of the differences that a life-long West coaster sees:
1. I never get to watch the end of Monday night football games. Who the hell can stay up past midnight on a weekday to watch football? Ridiculous.
2. Maryland is the South. Yes, we're south of the Mason-Dixon line. I've found people very friendly here in spite of the reputation of Baltimore as Murder City USA.
3. Politics are really nasty here. With the coming election, I've seen attack ads that I just don't believe, by both sides. A pox on all their houses, I say. I've seen negative ads in SF and Seattle but they pale by comparison with what has been on TV here.
4. There is little or no awareness of the environment out here. People still eat food caught in the Chesapeake Bay for God's sake! (just insane) They still salt the roads here - heavily.
5. Lacrosse is very big here. I knew what it was but had no idea anyone still played it. I presume they know that it's derived from an old Iroquois game where they batted around the head of their recently-deceased foes. Of course, I still have no idea how the game is played.
6. Private schools are big here. I live in a nice residential area in Baltimore and I'm next to Gilman, the Friends School, Roland Park Country School, and Boys Latin. There is money in this town, it's just careful to hide itself.
I've have been lured back to watching Dr. Who. It happened last Friday night.
I was settling in to watch the SciFi channel and noticed that they are now running a triple bill of Heroes, Dr. Who, and Battlestar Galactica. Now Heroes and BSG are both really good shows and I used to watch Dr. Who religiously (at least as a child and in college).
I was really happy to see that the scripts have come back to what they once were. The charm of Dr. Who is that it doesn't require a big budget - it's a show built on the imagination of the viewer and the writers. For the first time in years, I saw an episode that made me want to watch more.
Perhaps this particular Doctor works for me (I'm a big Tom Baker fan), or perhaps the script was just first-rate but I found myself glued to the plot, wondering how it was going to turn out.
I would wholeheartedly recommend the new show to those of you who have drifted away as I once had. It's no longer the longest running show on TV - I think it started in something like 1957 but it has had a couple of year hiatus. But the BBC has brought it back with some panache.
The third season of Lost has finally started and I find myself rapidly becoming entranced again. I've identified with it so much that I find myself truly disliking the "Others" and very much look forward to them getting their comeuppance. Sadly, I suspect that it will not be to the end of this season that anything like that happens.
But that is the nature of episodic television.
On the plus side, I've just acquired the first season of The Wire (shot here in Baltimore) and very much look forward to watching it. There is a lot to be said for being able to pick up a series that already has three seasons in the can. Something like discovering a new author whose work you like.
In the grand scheme of things, it will likely mean little.
However, on Saturday the Scottish team defeated what is likely the best team in the world at the moment - France. Normally, the pecking order of my support would be England, France, and that's about it. But given that I was born in Scotland, how could I not hope to support the supposedly outmanned Scottish team.
They were quite outclassed in the first half, the midfield having to fall back to defend the goal, so persistent and penetrating were the French attacks. But as the game wore on, you could seem them gaining in confidence.
It was, as they say, a tale of two halves. When the second half started the Scottish team had not only a renewed vigor but definitely a sense of "we can compete". There is hardly a man on the Scottish team of "world-class" talent, save perhaps Darren Fletcher and the young goalkeeper, Gordon. But that didn't stop them from attacking, pressing the French every time they had the ball, and extending the field to start playing in the final third of the French end.
A very nice goal from open play put them up and rather than retreating and playing negatively, they continued to attack, keeping France off-balance until the final whistle.
A classic lesson in how to soak up the initial pressure and still eke out a victory. I haven't checked the latest FIFA rankings but I wouldn't be surprised if Scotland was ranked 50+ places lower than France.
1-0 it might be, but it will be an evening that Scotland fans remember for quite a while.